Indonesia wants farmers and fishermen to join the ecommerce revolution

President Joko Widodo (center, red shirt) at the opening ceremony of the Indonesia Ecommerce Summit. Photo credit: IESE

Yesterday at the opening of the Indonesia Ecommrce Summit, president Joko Widodo and several of his ministers, including tech minister Rudiantara and trade minister Thomas Lembong, took the stage.

Widodo once again stressed how relevant growing Indonesia’s digital economy is to his agenda – remember the target is for ecommerce to grow to the point that people spend US$130 billion online in 2020.

Those who follow his speeches on the subject have noticed a new tune: government ambitions now extend to bringing innovation to industries still largely untouched by digital transformation, like agriculture and fisheries.

Earlier this month, the president kicked off a government program to that effect in Brebes, a small town in central Java. The area is known nationwide as a major producer of spring onions.

Women sorting onions in Brebes. Photo credit: Firman Wibowo.

Brebes and its onion farmers are now some sort of a live test lab for digital tools that are supposed to improve farmers’ livelihoods.

“Advances in technology have to benefit the entire population, and the government has to push farmers and small businesses in Indonesia to ‘go digital,’” tech minister Rudiantara, who was also present at the Brebes launch, said on the occasion.

Startups doing field work

A handful of startups were brought along on the Brebes field trip.

Petani is an Android app created by 8Villages, a startup headquartered in Singapore that’s been developing information services for Southeast Asian farmers since 2011 – initially SMS-based.

LimaKilo and TaniHub have very similar concepts – they want to help farmers connect with consumers directly, cutting out some of the many middlemen that drive prices up for consumers and keep farmers’ profit margins low. Pantau Harga is an app that lets producers and consumers check commodity prices in real time.

So the theory: each of those three startups is new to the world of agriculture tech. They emerged in 2015 following hackathons or, in the case of TaniHub, a Startup Weekend event. They’ll have as much to learn about the world of agriculture as the farmers need to learn about the world of digital technology.

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